A long blast of the horn and a buffeting gust of wind announced the subway train’s arrival.
Engineer Laurenti closed his eyes and with a courageous leap, he left the platform.
But since, after all, fate doesn’t give a damn about pride, none of the numerous commuters riding the A Line of Metroroma that day were able to enjoy the privilege of being eyewitnesses to the self-sacrifice of a decent, respectable man. A suicide without witnesses, without a farewell note, without even a last text of explanation, is no suicide. At the very worst, it can be written off as a “mishap,” due in this case to an “accidental loss of consciousness or control.” Or else, to use the words of Don Filiberto, the elderly parish priest of the church of the Redeemer, due to the omnipresent, unquestioned, and unquestionable “will of God.”
And Sebastiano, who instead knew, was forced to swallow—in the coils of a disgust that was actually stronger than his grief and sense of guilt—the grueling mantra of a post-mortem eulogy from which the cursed word—suicide—had been rigorously banished.
A few rows further back, sitting among the incredulous friends of the victim and the families of the employees, who were anxiously worrying about the uncertainties the future held, was another one who knew. He was a young man Sebastiano’s age, named Manfredi Scacchia, and he was the son of one of Rome’s most celebrated loan sharks, that very same Scipione Scacchia who, along with his good buddies Dante Pietranera and Amedeo Cerruti, formed the trio of bastardly buzzards better known in the circuit as the Three Little Pigs.
“May he roast in hell, why wouldn’t he have killed himself, the engineer. He had more debts than hairs on his head.”
In response to old Scipione’s comment, young Manfredi had retorted with a polite skepticism. He knew them well, the Laurentis, both father and son. He’d sat next to Sebastiano for the five interminable years of high school at the prestigious Convitto Nazionale. Now they were attending the same university, both in the department of economics, and they were both doing equally well. They were great friends. It had been none other than old man Scipione who had mapped out for his only son a future different from his own.
“You need to rise in society, boy, you follow me? You need to climb the ladder! So, don’t behave like a dickhead, mix with these upright citizens and learn from them. We need to climb, got it? Climb.”
Manfredi was a wise and obedient son. So he refused to believe his father’s words. The engineer was a model businessman, a respectable person, one of the few still in circulation. So what the fuck are we talking about here?
“Listen, handsome, you study because you need to climb the ladder, but on certain things, trust your papa. Listen, let me tell you something. Before he let that fucking train scatter him in all directions, the man went to beg a bank director, and a friend, for help. And this friend of his suggested he turn to . . . you want to guess?”
“To you?”
“That’s right. You see, when you really try . . . The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it? And I’d already drawn up a debt reduction plan and everything. But that asshole, God rest his soul, let himself get carried away by his foolish pride. Well, amen.”
Manfredi was working his way up the procession toward the ritual’s critical moment; the handshake and embrace with the orphaned son. If his father was right, thought Manfredi, the son would suffer the consequences of the father’s misgivings. And another step forward would be achieved.
When Sebastiano greeted him, with a heartfelt embrace, the loan shark’s son whispered to him, along with a brotherly “you need to stay strong,” another phrase, which the circumstances at hand deprived of its real meaning: “You can count on me.”
The real meaning became clear to young Sebastiano a couple of weeks later when, in the lurid office that old Scipione stubbornly kept just a stone’s throw from the old Monte di Pietà, the religious pawn shop that had been the center, for six hundred years, of the piazza of the loan sharks (what can I tell you, son, I’m just sentimental like that), the debt left unpaid by the late Engineer Laurenti was taken over by the Stella d’Oriente investment company. Sebastiano could have gotten away with just forfeiting his inheritance, if only his father had kept him out of it. But Sebastiano had signed, and now he could no longer get clear. He was therefore officially the owner of companies that had been boiled clean. He was personally responsible for the debts. And so it was that young Sebastiano Laurenti, so recently a promising young talent of the Roman economy, became—thanks to another half-dozen signatures at the bottom of complex contracts—the personal slave of his fraternal friend Manfredi.
XII
Ten o’clock. The time is now, thought Tito Maggio. This evening’s guests were arriving.
On Via dei Banchi Nuovi, in the heart of the Baroque quarter of Rome, through the glass front door, the chef and proprietor of La Paranza, “the restaurant serving live seafood for those who want to feel fully alive,” saw a metallic gray BMW 7 Series with flashing roof lights. The driver hurried around to open the rear door, holding out his arm to the prelate as he stepped out. Tall and elegant in his clerical attire, he was accompanied by a man who must have been around the same age. A little over sixty. His hair was fluffy and white, and he was wearing a three-piece summer Tasmanian wool suit, an immaculately white shirt with a high, stiff collar and a polka dot tie with a minuscule Vatican coat of arms.
Maggio executed one of his most energetic bows. He brought the prelate’s highly perfumed hand, adorned with the episcopal ring, to his forehead. Then he extended his own hand toward the second guest, who clasped it in a flaccid, sweaty grip.
“Welcome to La Paranza.”
“Thank you,” the man replied. He then proceeded to introduce himself and then the prelate.
“I am Benedetto Umiltà, pleased to make your acquaintance. Allow me to introduce His Excellency Monsignor Mariano Tempesta.”
Tito gestured for his two guests to follow him to the private dining room, which he indicated with a broad sweep of his arm, stepping to one side as did so. Tempesta and Umiltà were welcomed into a circular room with a wine cellar on the wall, illuminated by the gentle light of the table lamps and redolent with the scent of the fresh flowers that, every morning, Tito Maggio ordered in, in exchange for two pounds of marinated anchovies, from a conniving employee of the municipal cemetery division.
“Are we still waiting for him?”
“Why of course. Though, as you may already know, other friends are expected to be joining us.”
“Certainly. No one’s chasing us. The night is still young.”
The prelate’s contemptuous sneer filled him with terror. Tito retreated toward the kitchen, bitterly regretting that last wisecrack. What on earth made you think that you could crack funny with a priest? What if these people complained? Why had he thought it was a good idea to turn on the charm with that Vatican crow, oh what an asshole he really was!
Once he entered the kitchen, he unleashed tension and discontent on his employees.
“What the fuck! You really are a dickhead, aren’t you! Madonna mia, Mustapha or whatever the fuck your name is, these little Toledo swords are supposed to be inserted in the prawns from the ass up, and not from the head down, do you understand that or not? If you do it that way you’re going to ruin them, you stupid fuck. Do you know what the English phrase finger food means, goddamn you and your ancestors to hell? It means that if I charge fifty euros for a plate with a couple of raw prawns to eat with your hands, you shouldn’t have to bring the customer a pair of gloves to keep from spraying themselves with the juice that drips out. I mean what the fuck! Come on, right?!”
Mustapha was a baby-faced Egyptian young man that Maggio had tracked down in a pizzeria on Via Giolitti, behind the train station, I Due Briganti, where he had always worked as a dishwasher for ten Euros a day. He simply nodded his head without having the strength to say so much as yes. Musta
pha pulled the two king prawns off the “Spanish” swords that Maggio bought, obviously counterfeit, in Gaeta from a guy that everyone knew as The Chinaman, and repeated the same operation from behind this time. His two comrades at the burners were silent. One of them was named Gianni, a guy with a long rap sheet, originally from Catanzaro, about fifty or so, with convictions for aggravated property crimes and attempted multiple homicide; Gianni had a pair of arms the size of planks with a shark tattooed on one and a killer whale on the other. The other kitchen worker was Hari, an Indian in his early thirties who detested seafood and whose true calling was selling DVDs of the greatest hits of Bollywood in a hole in the wall on Via Foscolo, at the corner of Piazza Vittorio.
Tito was just about to resume his tirade when Gianni pulled the cigar stub out of the corner of his mouth and brusquely informed him that the Three Little Pigs had arrived. Tito Maggio, sniffing and wiping his nose, left the kitchen.
Benedetto Umiltà delicately lifted a bottle of water and filled the bishop’s glass.
“I’m so happy you can be with us this evening, Your Excellency.”
“I believe it was important, no?”
“Fundamental, I’d say. But we are men troubled with our small, foolish worldly concerns. What is absolutely crucial for us, is hardly as compelling to pastors of souls like Your Excellency.”
“Even pastors have their earthly needs and their reasons for impatience, my dear Benedetto, as you know full well.”
Tempesta smiled, displaying a perfect set of teeth. And Umiltà recognized that grin he knew well, a grimace halfway between a sneer and an obscenity. The first time it had assaulted him had been on the eve of the 2000 Jubilee. All of Christian Rome was opening itself to the brotherhood and the wallets of the world at large. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from the four corners of the world. A pact would have to be made with the city’s pagan soul. Benedetto Umiltà was the right man for the job. He was operating at the highest level of public works.
He and Tempesta had understood each other immediately. Don Mariano had not yet been ordained a bishop, but he was already studying to be a cardinal. And in that year of grace, His Holiness the Pope had named him envoy aross the Tiber for the public works of the Jubilee. Umiltà had certainly known profiteers in and around the curia in his time, but what had struck him about Tempesta was that he had method. Method. He was weak in the flesh and in his appetites—and there was nothing new about that—but he experienced sin as a resource, an opportunity, not a shame. And he had understood him, in fact, in that same year of grace, at Porta Pia, in the offices of the Ministry of Public Works. They’d signed one of the protocols of an agreement that released the financing for the construction of the last section of the underpass of Porta Cavalleggeri. Tempesta, after laying down his Montblanc pen on the long table where the papers had been signed, had smiled that very same smile. Then, he’d placed that palm of his right hand on the back of Benedetto Umiltà’s left hand.
“Rome, our Rome, once the cradle of a sublime beauty, will become even more beautiful.”
“No doubt about it,” Benedetto Umiltà had replied, practically lost in other thoughts, uncertain whether in that context he should already unfurl the title of “Excellency” that was generally expected to be in the offing for Tempesta.
The monsignor had tightened his grip and looked him right in the eye.
“But the one thing for which we should never stop thanking the Almighty,” he’d added in a gentle whisper, “is the beauty of His incomparable works. First and foremost, the human body.”
Benedetto Umiltà had blushed and then he’d returned the gaze.
At that very instant, they had told each other everything.
Benedetto had fled, appalled. He, who had always felt he was being stalked by sin as if by a relentless ghost, had been profoundly mortified and struggled mightily to break free. He stopped answering the monsignor’s phone calls, stood him up, entrusting their appointments to colorless substitutes, he even considered requesting a transfer to some other office. One evening he’d found himself unexpectedly face to face with him, in the foyer of a concert hall where they had both just attended a recital of works by contemporary composers from Eastern Europe.
“Don’t you think it’s wonderful how our brothers from the East, even as they struggle under the heel of a pitiless dictatorship, still benefited from the power of such a courageous, radical spiritual elevation?”
Benedetto Umiltà had mumbled something, once again trying to make his escape.
The monsignor had put his hands together and shaken his head. And on his sharply honed face that smile had appeared, at once so gentle and so tremendous.
“You’re ready, Benedetto. But you lack the courage to admit it. I have my car right outside.”
And that had marked a liberation. A revelatory ray of sunshine which, from that day forward, would illuminated things with a different light. If Benedetto Umiltà now experienced desire as a gift, that was thanks to him, Mariano Tempesta.
Sure enough, the Jubilee and that meeting had projected him into a completely different dimension. Not only of the flesh. He had ventured into the Big Time. The contracts for the Jubilee had made him rich. And in the years that followed, his bank account with the IOR had swollen to eight figures. Between one ministry and another, he’d survived the various coalition governments, both left-wing and right, that had taken turns running the country with no more difficulty than it took to change his shirt in the morning. And for that matter, what the dickens, he was just a technician, after all. A civil servant. With the support, naturally, of Tempesta, who, as a bishop, had proven to be, if possible, even more ambitious in his appetites. In his new position, the monsignor oversaw and administered a considerable slice of the real estate holdings of the Holy See. Magnificent homes and apartments, in the heart of the historical center of Rome, rented out as residences or as sexual playgrounds to a plethora of political barons and boyars, managers, journalists, and mistresses of the world of political patronage, with Umiltà acting as both their guarantor and their blackmailer.
And now the game was rising to an even greater level.
Under the table, silently, his hand reached out for Tempesta’s, which responded, promptly.
Tito Maggio shut behind him the sliding glass door that separated the aquarium of the open kitchen from the dining room. Smoothing it with both hands, he pressed the chef’s toque down on his head, checking to make sure that his irremediably greasy hair hadn’t already stained it. He checked the time—10:30 P.M.—and tried to suppress the shortness of breath that made his diaphragm pump like a bellows. It was a nervous tic, actually. He blamed it on the excess fat and the weight that he carried with him wherever he went, but it was just an indicator of the anxiety attacks that regularly swept over him. Samurai was a maniac when it came to punctuality. Being that late wasn’t like him. He just hoped Samurai wasn’t about to jilt him entirely. That was his night. The evening of Tito Maggio’s resurrection.
The Three Little Pigs were sitting at the usual corner table. Not indoors—’cause with this air conditioning you’re going to give us all sciatica—but in the garden rather, which the wood-lined, barrel-roofed dining room strung with fishing nets overlooked. Right under the lemon trellis, with its terracotta vases he hadn’t finished paying for yet. Better that way: at least they were out of sight, where they wouldn’t disgust the chic clientele.
The Three Little Pigs. His great misfortune. Dante, Amedeo, Scipione. Three cousins, people said, but who knew if it was true, after all. They’d fattened up when Dandi was ruling the roost at Campo de’ Fiori and they’d grown up shining Secco’s shoes. Taken together, they were two hundred years old. Old, ugly, nasty, immortal, like the loans they made out of their gold-buying operation on Piazza del Monte di Pietà and on Viale Trastevere. Shops that never close, where business is always good, like graveyards. Tito was in debt to them fo
r five hundred thousand euros. Too many ill-considered expenses, too many crazy deals, too much cocaine. Five hundred large. With sixty percent annual interest. And even though he’d raised the prices on the menu like a hot-air balloon, he couldn’t keep up with them. Also because he’d made up his mind to sacrifice all sorts of things, but not cocaine. Of course, he subsidized the white powder in part by peddling it, too—but not much, just twenty or thirty grams a month, strictly for his friends—and in part with the lavish arrangements of raw seafood that he delivered punctually, at noon every God-given day, including Sundays, to Villa Marianna, the state-subsidized clinic run by Professor Temistocle Malgradi, the Honorable’s brother. In that clinic, Ciro Viglione, the king of Casapesenna, was under hospital arrest. He was healthy as a horse, Don Ciro, and Christ could he eat. But still, poor Tito, it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. The deeper he slid into the shit, the more he snorted. And the more he snorted, the deeper in the shit he was submerged.
He’d even thought of going back to the porn industry, where in another life he’d been an actor much in demand. But now, the shape he was in, somewhere between Oliver Hardy and the fat musketeer, what was his name again . . . they wouldn’t even have hired him for a costume drama! Anyway, the Three Little Pigs were regular guests at La Paranza. Lunch and dinner. Antipasto, pasta course, entrée, desert, espresso, and after-dinner drink. Once they had eaten their fill, they ordered a round of Avernas and summoned him to the table. They’d point him to a chair with them and pull out one of those graph-paper Pigna notebooks, greasy-paged and dogeared, full of numbers scrawled in that loopy handwriting that is typical of illiterates.
“Tito, don’t think for a second we’re trimming a penny. You’re still going to have to pay us the five hundred thousand.”
“Then what are we doing?”
“When a person eats well, he’s not in so much of a hurry. And we’re eating very nicely here, Tito. That’s what we’re doing. We’re forgetting about our hurry.”
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